Ebb & Flow Sour (Plum & Boysenberry)
Muskoka Brewery

 

473 mL can from the LCBO; best before Dec 17 2020 and served well chilled.

Pours cloudy and turbid; its purplish magenta-coloured body is initially crowned with a centimetre of frothy, pink-tinged foam that fizzles off within ninety seconds, leaving behind a bubbly collar. There's decent lace generation as the level drops - looks good to me. It smells of plums, wheat malt and berries, of course, but there's also hints of something like a berry-lemon yogurt smoothie. Is that a thing? I guess it is now.

The flavour profile doesn't stray far from that theme - there's a tart nip of lemony, yogurt lactic acidity, which naturally pairs quite well with the sweeter notes of plum and boysenberry - which, if you're unfamiliar with the fruit, is along the lines of a blackberry x raspberry cross. Berry flavours and lemon tartness carry on through the finish, carrying on into a fruity aftertaste with just a touch of sour plum. Light-ish in body, with a frothy, smooth texture and rather gentle carbonation. A fine way to wet your whistle on a hot, midsummer's afternoon.

Final Grade: 3.93, a very solid B+. I enjoyed Muskoka's Ebb & Flow Plum & Boysenberry significantly more than their original (unflavoured) Ebb - which at 2.4% was too light, not very sour and a mostly insipid experience. However, the plum/boysenberries manage to gussy the base beer up effectively enough, resulting in a pleasing summer quaffer that remains quite light and sessionable in spite of the slight abv bump. Plums happen to be one of my favourite summer fruits, so your mileage might vary, but I'll be picking this up again in the near future and will encourage other BAs to give it a try as well.